Tory Historian took advantage of the NFT’s Laurence Olivier season in which “Henry V” has been given pride of place with a certain number of disclaimers by critics who, over the years, have had to acknowledge with pursed lips that, despite its heroism and emphasis on patriotism, the film is superb. Some of us might think that contrariwise, the heroism and patriotism add to the quality of the film but that is probably why we are not film critics.

Made during the war, with Olivier taking time out from his service with Fleet Air Arm, it does emphasise patriotic ideals, in particular ideals of England. As it happens, none of that was invented by the film-makers – the lines, the images, the concepts are there in Shakespeare’s play, which is what makes them so interesting.

Cinematically the film is mesmerizing, beginning and ending with a panorama shot of Elizabethan London, carefully recreated from contemporary prints. Famously, Olivier accepted and incorporated into the film the sheer theatricality of the play. We start with a raucous performance of “The Chronicle History of King Henry the Fift with His Battell Fought at Agincourt in France”, during which the Chorus, played by Leslie Banks, urges us to expand the play in our imagination to take in England and France, and opens out first into the Boar’s Head Inn, where Falstaff is dying, then the two courts, the armies and the battles themselves. William Walton’s music spreads through the film.

The opened up scenes are not realistic in any sense, showing the castles, the fields, Princess Katharine’s enclosed garden and everybody’s costumes as illustrations from the Book of Hours. The faint artificiality of Technicolour adds to the imagery’s beauty.

There is, throughout the play, an image of England and of the English King that is essentially different from France. The French King is not an unattractive personality but he is weak and has been buffeted by history. The Dauphin is a fool and a braggart, a man who causes trouble through his thoughtlessness. The French nobles have no link with the people. The only truly attractive character is the Herald as he becomes more and more impressed by Henry.

England, on the other hand, is its people; the King is the King of all and the yeomen are as important if not, indeed, more important than the nobles. Although, the core of the play is England as reality and as idea, there is a kind of a proto-Union in the delightful vignette of the four captains: Gower, Fluellen, Jamy and McMorris, representing the four parts of it. They dispute, quarrel and drink together and there is an undying link between them.

In the night before the battle, the French nobles and the Dauphin sit in their own tent and alternate between dismal premonition and braggadocio. The Dauphin, spends not a minute of his time on his troops – they are there to serve him and the nobles. If anything is mourned it is the destruction of its flower at Crecy, though the lesson of that has not been learnt by anyone except the King of France. The heavy and heavily decorated armour in which the knights have themselves mounted onto their unfortunate horses symbolizes France in the same way as swiftness, lightness and, above all, ingenuity symbolize England.

In the night before the battle, Henry leaves his nobles without a single complaint from them, puts on a cloak and walks through the camp, making sure he visits every tent (“a touch of Harry in the night”). He talks to soldiers as well as captains; he listens to their complaints and to their fears; he meditates on the duties and responsibilities of kingship, in some ways echoing his own father’s thoughts on the head that wears the crown lying uneasily. Of course, he does not have his father’s bad conscience, having inherited rather than usurped his position. Nevertheless, he acknowledges his responsibility for whatever horrors might come in the morning.

There is an interesting discussion between two soldiers in which one expresses the view that if the King’s cause be wrong (the very fact that an ordinary soldier can think such a thing is astonishing) he will pay a heavy price for the battle and its outcome:

I am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle; for how can they charitably dispose of any thing when blood is their argument?

To which another soldier, one who is considerably more rebellious in his attitude to the King, replies:

Every subject's duty is the king's; but every subject's soul is his own.

Henry hears it all and thinks his own heavy thoughts.

His prayer at dawn is interesting. He does not pray for victory but for his soldiers to lose their fears:

O God of battles! steel my soldiers' hearts;Possess them not with fear; take from them nowThe sense of reckoning, if the opposèd numbersPluck their hearts from them.

When he addresses his troops he addresses them all on both occasions. They are all his friends, his brothers:

For he to-day that sheds his blood with meShall be my brother; be he ne'er so vileThis day shall gentle his condition:

(The film uses the alternative reading of “base” instead of “vile”.)

The battle is won by the yeomen archers and their craft as much as by the outnumbered nobles and the image of England as the land where all are one and the King is at one with all, is complete.

As a coda one sees Henry wooing the French Princess Katharine, who is obviously greatly taken by him, telling her that he is a plain speaking English soldier, who loves her but who will not produce flowery language for her sake. She must take him as he is but as he is he will be hers. This is a wonderful English theme, developed by numerous writers in subsequent centuries.

Of particular interest is Olivier’s Churchillian pronunciation of a few French sentences, which must have been treasured by those who understood the joke.

Olivier’s King Harry shows the actor to be a remarkable film director and producer as well as the greatest Shakespearian actor of the twentieth century. He may not have had Gielgud’s mellifluous and mesmerizing voice but he could say those lines as if they were a natural way of talking. Who can rival that even now?

“Henry V” was most probably written and first performed in 1599, only a decade after England had withstood and triumphed over a great danger from Spain, in the middle of yet another Irish rebellion and a time when folk memory could still recall accounts of the century long civil war that preceded the Tudors. A look across the Channel would have shown countries where civil warfare seemed almost endemic.

Olivier’s film was made at a time when Britain (or England) was once again in danger and the people were united behind the leader (with some very loud grumbling in the ranks).

There have been numerous interpretations of Shakespeare’s attitude to war – was he glorifying it and praising Essex’s incompetent attempt to subdue Tyrone’s rebellion (probably, if he knew which side his bread was buttered on) or undermining it by the presence of such contemptible braggarts as Pistol and cowardly thieves like Bardolph and Nym? The answer, one suspects, is both, which is a happy thought for all those critics and producers. How else could they pretend that they understand what Will said than Will did himself?